VEDA, vflfdft (Skt. mitt, knowledge, from rid, to know; connected with (11:. Folk, foithi, I know, Ffociv, /Wein, Lat. ridere, Slay. fiVe, I know. 011G. leizzan, Ger. wissca, (loth., AS. witan, Eng. wit, to know). The collective designation of the ancient sacred literature of India, o• of individual books belonging to that literature. At an unknown date, which may be conventionally averaged up as n.c. 1500, Aryan tribes began to migrate from the Iranian high lands on the north of the Hindu Kush into the northwest of India, the plains of the river Indus and its tributaries. The non-Aryan aborigines were easily eonquered, but the conquest was fol lowed by gradual amalgamation of the fairer hued conquerors with the dark aborigines. The Aryans brought with them a primitive pastoral civilization, a language which was a mere dia lectic variety of the speech spoken in Iran, and religious beliefs which show close connection with the ancient Persian religion of the Avesta, and, to a lesser and more problematic extent, with the beliefs of the remaining Indo-Germanic peo ples, such as the Greeks (see GREEK RELIGION) and the Teutons. (See SCANDINAVIAN AND TEU ToNIC MYTHOLOGY.) From the very start we are confronted by a poetical literature, primitive on the whole, yet lacking neither in refinement and beauty of thought, nor in skill in the handling of language and metre. The literature is throughout religious, and includes prayers and sacrificial formulas, offered to the gods by the priests; charms for witchcraft. and medicine, manipulated by magicians and medieine-men; expositions of the sacrifice; theological com ments and legends; higher speculations, philo sophic and theosophic, growing up in connection with the simpler beliefs; and finally rules for conduct in every-day life at borne and abroad. This is the Veda as a whole.
At the base of this entire literature of more than 100 books lie four varieties of metrical com positions known as the four Vedas in the nar rower sense. These are tire Rig-Veda, the rajur Veda, the Sama-reda, and the Atharva-Veda.
These four names come from a somewhat later time, and do not coincide exactly with the earlier names, nor do they correspond with the contents of the texts themselves. The earlier names are milt, 'stanzas of praise,' yajzinfi, stanzas and formulas.' Omani, melodies; and atharrafigirasah., 'blessings and curses.' The Col lection which goes by the name of the Big-Veda contains not only 'stanzas of praise,' but also `blessings and curses,' as well as most of the stanzas which form the basis of the S.a Man melodies. The Atharva-Veda contains req. and ?fajOlr.si, as well as blessings and curses. The Yajur-Veda also contains many blessings and curses, in addition to its main topic. The Sama Veda is merely a collection of a certain kind of `stanzas of praise' which occur for the most part in the ltig-Veda, but are here set to music by means of definite musical notations.
The Rig-Veda is on the whole the most im portant as well as the oldest of the four collec tions. A little more than 1000 hymns, equaling in bulk the surviving poems of Homer, are ar ranged in ten books called nu/riga/ft, or circles. Six of them (ii.-vii.), the so-called family books, form the nucleus of the collection. Each of these is the work of a different seer and his descend ants, as can be seen from the hymns themselves. The eighth hook and the first fifty hymns of the first book, belonging to the family of Kanva, are arranged strophically in groups of two or three stanzas. The most marked peculiarity of these Hymns is that they form the bulk of the stanzas sung with melodies in the Sannt-Veda. The hymns of the ninth book are addressed directly to Soma (q.v.). The remainder of the first book and the entire tenth hook are more miscellaneous in character and problematic as to arrangement. On the whole they are of later origin, for themes foreign to the narrower purpose of the such as theosophic hymns and witchcraft hymns, ap pear in considerable number. The poems of the latter class frequently reappear, usually with variations, in the Atharva-Veda. .